Imagine that you are a nineteen-year-old boy working in a grocery store. How exciting, but honestly not at all. It is summer time and you live five miles from the beach, you want to be out having fun enjoying your teenage youth. Instead you are stuck in a boring A & P and working. You just stepped into the life of Sammy, the main character from John Updike’s short story “A & P”. To conclude this short story Sammy quits his job, but why? Sammy quits his job at the A & P because Sammy is bored with his time spent there and needs a new perspective on life. In the begging of the story you find out that Sammy is a very descriptive person. He describes everything in detail about the way the three girls look to the sound of the cash register.
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However, I do not think Sammy is watching them because of their sexual appeal. I feel that Sammy is watching them because they are more intriguing than anything else in the store. It just so happens to be that for a nineteen year-old boy he finds three young girls more interesting to pay attention to then the average mom that is shopping at the A & P. Queenie and the girls are just a better distraction for Sammy while he is bored at the same old routine of work. Along with being bored with the same soundings in the A & P, Sammy seems to be bored with the town he currently lives in. Sammy talks about the town he lives and the people that live there as well, and makes this statement:
As I say, we’re right in the middle of town, and if you stand at our front doors you can see two bank and the Congregational church and the newspaper store and three real-estate offices and about twenty-seven old freeloaders tearing up Central Street because the sewer broke again. It’s not as if we’re on the Cape; we’re north of Boston and there’s people in this town haven’t seen the ocean for twenty years. (Updike
However, I do not think Sammy is watching them because of their sexual appeal. I feel that Sammy is watching them because they are more intriguing than anything else in the store. It just so happens to be that for a nineteen year-old boy he finds three young girls more interesting to pay attention to then the average mom that is shopping at the A & P. Queenie and the girls are just a better distraction for Sammy while he is bored at the same old routine of work. Along with being bored with the same soundings in the A & P, Sammy seems to be bored with the town he currently lives in. Sammy talks about the town he lives and the people that live there as well, and makes this statement:
As I say, we’re right in the middle of town, and if you stand at our front doors you can see two bank and the Congregational church and the newspaper store and three real-estate offices and about twenty-seven old freeloaders tearing up Central Street because the sewer broke again. It’s not as if we’re on the Cape; we’re north of Boston and there’s people in this town haven’t seen the ocean for twenty years. (Updike